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At long last, rapper A$AP Rocky treated fans with his first album since 2018. Released Jan. 16, “Don’t Be Dumb” marked A$AP Rocky’s fourth studio album. The first track, “ORDER OF PROTECTION,” begins by referencing his prolonged absence from the scene:
“It’s been a lil’ while since I been in the league / A couple lil’ trials, couple of leaks / Still in the field like I’m runnin’ in cleats.”
The trials A$AP Rocky mentions took place in 2019 and 2025, though “lil” is putting it lightly. In the latter, he faced up to 24 years in prison for allegedly shooting at a former friend after an altercation in Hollywood.
The trial received widespread public attention, in part due to the judge’s decision to allow cameras in the courtroom. In such a publicized trial involving a prominent rap artist, where both sides’ attorneys scrutinized text messages, surveillance video, recorded conversations and more, you might expect the prosecution to turn to his songs’ lyrics for evidence.
Luckily for him, the prosecution did not — and broke from an increasingly common trend in the litigation of rap artists. Like many prominent rap artists, he has quite a few lyrics that could appear suspicious to the eyes of an uninformed juror. A$AP Rocky was acquitted in February 2025.
More than a year before, fellow rap superstar Young Thug accepted a plea deal sentencing him to 15 years of probation in Georgia’s longest criminal trial in history. In this case, however, prosecutors were permitted to use lyrics from 17 of Thug’s songs as evidence.
Trial judges granted the same allowance in the criminal trials of rappers Gunna, Tay K, YNW Melly, Tekashi 6ix9ine, Bobby Shmurda and even Snoop Dogg. An Arizona State University research article found that between 2012 and 2017 alone, prosecutors in 211 different cases used an artist’s lyrics as evidence against them at trial.
The abundance of these cases is stunning in a country where we are guaranteed freedom of expression. Why are so many rappers targeted for their speech during trials?
While the First Amendment means the government cannot exercise prior restraint by, for example, preventing an artist from creating a song, there is not a constitutionally-enshrined guarantee that any comment an artist makes in a song is inadmissible as evidence.
“The evidentiary value of song lyrics and the right to make those song lyrics are just two different legal issues,” Zachary Cormier, an associate professor at the IU Indianapolis Robert H. McKinney School of Law, said.
Trial judges determine which evidence is admissible in a trial and must first consider if a certain piece of evidence is relevant to the case. To be used, a judge must decide if evidence will impact how probable a given “fact” of the case is. A judge must also weigh the value of the evidence against its potential to bias the jury — if the risk for prejudice exceeds its value as proof, the evidence can’t be admitted, according to Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence.
“The judge has to look at the lyrics at issue, whether or not there's some type of relevance to the actual crime,” Cormier said. “Okay, well, how risky is it at trial that the lyrics themselves are going to cause the jury to make a verdict based upon an emotional response and not the rest of the evidence?”
In some cases, the prosecution might use an artist’s lyrics to argue for their bad character rather than prove they committed a crime. If a defendant claimed they know nothing about drugs during a drug trafficking case, the prosecution could try to use the artist’s own lyrics to prove them wrong.
“If they have rap lyrics that are going into detail about drug use, or about certain types of drugs or selling drugs, that could be used, not for purposes of approving knowledge, or plan, or intent, and not necessarily the crime itself,” Cormier said.
The evidentiary rules are supposed to apply equally to all forms of artistic expression, but in practice, it's rare to see any other kind of art used in court. To understand why, we first need to understand the genesis of rap’s conventions.
Since its creation in the 1970s, but particularly with the rise of the “Gangsta Rap” subgenre in the late ‘80s (think N.W.A., Ice-T, The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur), many rap songs express the daily struggles of people living in poor, urban areas. Indeed, poverty, drug addiction, crime, encounters with the police, systemic discrimination and violence remain common subjects in rap songs today.
Not only are these themes inherent in the genre, but rappers also frequently exaggerate and allegorize them for entertainment. Some rappers, like the late MF DOOM, even adopt different personas song to song.
A complex blend of personal experiences, imagination, figurative language and wordplay are all-too-commonly misidentified as literal.
When I wake up in the morning and put on my rap playlist, I’m not looking to fantasize about fleeing the police or stealing a car — I just want to start the day off with some energy. Sure, a song’s lyrics might be provocative, but they’re just one aspect of a larger work crafted by an artist to be punchy, raw and unapologetic, not necessarily true.
Unsurprisingly, Paul McCartney was never subpoenaed to testify about the grisly murder he wrote about in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” Despite confessing to killing a man within the first minute of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Freddie Mercury was never charged with homicide. Nor was Bruce Springsteen ever brought to justice for the mass murder he describes in “Nebraska.”
In any other category of art, it would be exceptional to prosecute the artist using their art as evidence — but because of the history and culture of rap, it’s become an accepted practice. Rap emerged from predominantly Black communities, so it’s no surprise that it’s the frequent target of a legal system that still struggles with racial bias.
Some politicians, like Reps. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., are working to change that. Last July, they reintroduced the Restoring Artistic Protections (RAP) Act to Congress, which would create an additional federal rule of evidence to prohibit the admission of a defendant’s creative or artistic work. Importantly, it would still let the work be admitted if it can be proven it was meant literally and contains specific references to the crime — à la GunRack from "Key & Peele.”
If adopted, this would be a monumental leap for a more equitable justice system. Rappers wouldn’t be immune from the law. They would finally be treated like every other artist on trial.
Too often, rappers face an unfair standard in American courts. Though it might be viewed as more inflammatory than other genres, purely due to its history and culture, rap music is art, not autobiography. The legal system needs to catch up and start treating it as such.
Spencer Schaberg (he/him) is a sophomore studying microbiology.
